FAB completes first live USD tokenized deposit trades in Middle East and Africa on Swift Ledger

First Abu Dhabi Bank has settled live US dollar payments with Citi using tokenized commercial bank deposits recorded on Swift's blockchain ledger, becoming the first lender in the Middle East and Africa to complete such transactions. The trades ran during the minimum viable product phase of Swift Ledger. They exercised the whole chain at once: Swift payment messaging, tokenized bank deposits, smart contracts and distributed ledger infrastructure, end to end.

Money stays on the balance sheet

The FAB–Citi design does not turn customer deposits into a settlement token. Balances remain on the books of the participating banks. Swift Ledger coordinates payment commitments and records the matching interbank liabilities without holding funds, and final settlement still runs through correspondent banking or another approved channel.

Citi said it was the first US bank to execute live native transactions on the ledger, and confirmed a second corridor with Singapore's OCBC covering Southeast Asia. Transactions involving DBS and UOB are expected during September.

Seventeen banks, six continents

Seventeen banks across six continents were preparing first live transactions as of July. The group includes ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, FAB, FirstRand Bank, HSBC, Itaú Unibanco, Lloyds Bank, Mashreq, MUFG Bank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB and Wells Fargo. FAB and Mashreq give the UAE two places in the initial lineup.

Swift moved the project from concept to activation in about nine months. The ledger is being attached to infrastructure that connects more than 11,000 financial institutions and over 200 markets; Swift says the equivalent of world GDP crosses that network every two to three days. The controlled proof-of-concept phase is scheduled to run from July to December 2026.

Three different kinds of digital money

Tokenized deposits are commercial bank deposits represented on a programmable ledger that stay liabilities of the issuing bank and are redeemable at par, according to the Bank for International Settlements. A stablecoin is a separately issued token whose issuer holds reserve assets against a reference currency. The Digital Dirham is something else again: central bank money with legal-tender status. The distinction matters because the BIS argues tokenized deposits keep money inside regulated commercial banks while interbank obligations settle in central-bank money, preserving the two-tier structure.

FAB sits on both sides of that line. It is involved in DDSC, a dirham-backed stablecoin developed with International Holding Company and Sirius International Holding, approved by the Central Bank of the UAE and live since February 2026. DDSC is pegged one-to-one to the dirham, runs on ADI Chain, and holds a central bank no-objection certificate to work with selected VARA-regulated exchanges. In November 2025, the Ministry of Finance and Dubai Finance completed the first government financial transaction using the Digital Dirham during the pilot phase of the Financial Infrastructure Transformation programme.

BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos said in an August speech that tokenized deposits could bring programmability into the existing monetary architecture. He listed interoperability, governance, legal certainty, cybersecurity and migration from legacy systems as the obstacles. The BIS-led Project Agorá has already prototyped wholesale cross-border payments using tokenized commercial bank deposits alongside tokenized central bank reserves, and in May the BIS said it would move to testing with real value.

What Citi brings to the corridor

Citi's 24/7 USD Clearing platform serves more than 300 bank clients worldwide, and Citi Token Services moves about $1 billion through tokenized deposits on a private permissioned blockchain across participating Citi locations. Siam Commercial Bank became the first financial institution client to go live on a combined Citi Token Services and 24/7 USD Clearing setup in July. In June, Citi launched digital depositary receipts for private-company shares on infrastructure operated by SIX. The bank describes the gap between round-the-clock commerce and limited banking hours as the "always-on divide."

The balance sheet behind the pilot

FAB reported AED1.41 trillion in total assets at end-June 2026, with AED661 billion in net loans and AED853 billion in customer deposits. First-half net profit reached AED10.73 billion. Its common equity Tier 1 ratio stood at 13.7 percent and its liquidity coverage ratio at 140 percent.

FAB said future work with Swift and the other participating banks will cover programmable treasury solutions for institutional and corporate clients. Swift has pointed to programmable corporate payment flows, foreign-exchange payment-versus-payment and cash legs tied to securities settlement as later uses, with ledger functionality and availability widening after the initial go-live phase.